Combustion Chemistry Task

The aim of this collaborative task is to build reaction mechanisms taking into account the formation and the consumption of species detected in combustion processes. Thanks to these models, precious information on the degrees and the rates of reactants conversion, the formation of pollutants, the effects of additives can be obtained. These mechanisms will then be used in the numerical simulation of combustion devices (engines, furnaces, boilers…) to define their best operating conditions.

The Combustion Chemistry (CC) task has to be envisioned as a supporting task to the other IEA tasks (HCCI, Alternative Fuels, Spray...).

It will aim at a tighter coordination and enhanced communication between research groups in kinetics. It would benefit from the IEA platform to gather the latest advances and needs from the more applied fields of combustion.

Several areas of combustion research have been identified as potential topics for collaborative work:

- Soot combustion

- Biofuels combustion

- Natural gas combustion

- Iso-octane/n-heptane combustion

- Gasoline surrogate combustion

- Furan combustion

The main focus of this collaborative task is to extend and to improve the understanding kinetics to reduce pollutants formation and to enable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) through the use of biofuels and increased engine efficiency. The combustion of hydrocarbons, oxygenated species and surrogate fuels needs to be well understood through more elaborate mechanisms ; such knowledge could be exploited to optimize the combustion processes or devices.